


Colour Me In: Brown

by Miss_Mil



Series: Colours [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s10e12 Line in the Sand, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 05:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8043958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Mil/pseuds/Miss_Mil
Summary: He sees it everywhere, surrounding him each night before he falls asleep, his mind refusing to let the wicked thoughts go. Brown to him was more frightening than black.





	Colour Me In: Brown

**Author's Note:**

> Another addition to the 'Colours' Series. This time, we are a go for Brown. 
> 
> TAG to S10_E12 'Line in the Sand'. 
> 
> BROWN:The colour brown is a friendly yet serious, down-to-earth colour that relates to security, protection, comfort and material wealth.

* * *

 

Brown was the colour of the casket he saw in his nightmares.

Smooth, polished oak topped with the Nation’s flag as it was carried along the perfect lawn of Arlington.

Brown was the colour of unseen horrors in a world where Carter no longer existed. She was laid to rest inside the gleaming casket, never to return to him in a world he didn’t even want to think about.

It was the colour of the earth she was buried beneath and the colour of his hands as he threw a handful of soil on top of her polished casket.

Brown haunted his dreams.

He sees it everywhere, surrounding him each night before he falls asleep, his mind refusing to let the wicked thoughts go. Brown to him was more frightening than black. 

For a world with blackness is one he can survive in, but one filled with brown, oak-coloured coffins he knows would destroy him before the day was out.

He stares at her silently, unblinking as if he is afraid she will disappear. The dull light from the infirmary avoids his face, the shadows reflecting his inner turmoil. The relief that the umber-coloured world is not claiming him just yet is sitting high in his chest, heart thudding along with the beeping of the monitor beside him.

It’s only now that Jack fully understands the terror that Sara experienced each time he came back from a mission injured or presumed dead. Although in hindsight he acknowledges that maybe it was better that way, not knowing what your partner was getting into every time they walked out the door.

The terror is so real; the threat that she will not come back on her own two legs but rather in that horrible, burnt sienna coloured casket is all too real. He didn’t want to be the one left behind.

She stirred from under the white sheets.

‘Carter,’ he spoke softly, unsure if she really is waking.

Her head rolled over to look at him, crystal blue eyes watery and unfocused.

‘Jack.’

His name had never sounded any better than when it came from her.

‘That bad?’

The two words were exactly what he doesn’t need to hear. It had been that close that he had jumped on the first plane he could get out of DC and he wasn’t leaving until she was able to walk herself out of here.

He nodded roughly, flicking a piece of invisible lint from his pants.

God, he didn’t do this well. He’d give anything to trade places with her.

‘Heard one of the Ori soldiers decided he didn’t like your outfit. Decided he should blast a hole in the side of it,’ Jack muttered gruffly.

‘Knew I should have worn the blue that day,’ she quipped, the words falling softly from her pale lips.

Jack smiled tightly.

‘You didn’t need to come,’ she whispered.

He didn’t need to tell her that there was not a chance in hell he’d wait by the phone at a desk in DC, hoping someone would call. He’d never let himself dwell on the thought that his desk is also that haunting brown.

‘Well I guess the cat’s outta the bag now,’ he spoke, folding his fingers around his own wrist, rubbing mindlessly at something that wasn’t really there.

She gave him a look that told him she thought he’d completely lost it.

It was the most known secret on the base.

Colonel Carter was strictly off-limits to anyone other than a certain General residing in DC.

He watched as she moved stiffly, a grimace marring her delicate features as she struggled to move without pain.

He didn’t need to tell her how bad it was. How close it was, or how very real the nightmares were becoming.

One day she was going to come back through that gate in brown.

Mitchell had warned him about the letters.

He could have guessed the password if he’d tried hard enough. But chances were he would never be able to bring himself to read it.

Somehow, Carter knews this. That the letter to him would be buried alongside her in that horrible brown-coloured casket. Unopened.

A part of him often wondered if she’d even bother to write him a goodbye letter. In his mind it seemed way to macabre for her.

‘You should be more careful out there, Carter,’ he said, his hands folded stoically in his lap.

‘Didn’t have you to watch my back, General,’ she smiled.

The remark was meant to be light-hearted, but it hit him in all the right places.

It _wouldn’t_ have happened if he wasn’t stuck behind his horrible oak desk.

If there was one thing in all the world he was good at, it was watching Carter’s behind.

She could see the worry in his eye, and reached out slowly to take his hand.

He squeezed her hand lightly, avoiding the IV line in the back of her wrist.

‘What are these?’ he asked curiously, flicking his head toward a paper bag on the edge of the table.

She smiled softly. ‘Macaroons.’

‘Ah.’

He wanted to say so much more to her, to tell her that she frightened him more today than ever before. That he is getting too old, and too sick of dreaming of a brown, deathly coloured world to do this anymore.

Retirement was looking pretty darn good.

Carter would be okay.

They would be fine.

And she was going to keep going through the Stargate, doing her job, whilst he would return to D.C., his awful coloured maple desk and his scratchy dress uniform to do his job as well.

But every night before he tried to sleep, he’d pray to whatever god – false or not -  was out there that he never, ever would have to live through the day he carried that polished oak casket down the glistening green lawns of Arlington.

Fin.


End file.
